The Tampa Bay Times newspaper will begin offering buyouts to current workers in advance of a round of layoffs, according to company memos posted online.

This comes as the St. Petersburg-based newspaper faces increasing financial strain and works with business consultants to improve the companys financial results.

Employees will have between March 10 and 24 to consider the packages, which could include up to 13 weeks of severance, plus two extra weeks, according to a memo sent to employees by Human Resources Director Sebastian Dortch that was posted on the website of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, which owns the Times.

Even if you are not interested, this is an opportunity to take stock of your place in the Times future, Dortch wrote. This is an important time to understand where you stand. After the buyout phase, it is clear that this work will result in some job reductions around the company.

The Times has been working to sell news bureaus, extra parking lots, the employee cafeteria and other assets to raise cash in recent years, and last December, the company took out a $28 million loan from a non-traditional lender, Boston-based Crystal Financial LLC. Half that amount went to pay off current debts and the full loan comes due in December 2016.

Both the Times and Poynter have seen their financial position strained in recent years, as have many media companies. The Times saw its Sunday circulation fall about 6 percent to 355,853, and daily circulation fall 4 percent Monday through Friday to 299,985, according to the Alliance for Audited Media.

The Times already conducted a round of layoffs in 2011 and temporarily cut pay in 2012. The companys most recent loan is backed by a half dozen parcels of real estate, including the companys headquarters in downtown St. Petersburg, part of which the Times recently made available for lease.

Times spokeswoman Jounice Nealy-Brown declined to answer questions about the moves, but sent a statement, reading, We are finding some ways to improve our results without compromising our quality. We want to support the colleagues whose jobs will be affected.

St. Petersburg, err, Tampa Bay Times, Pravda Florida keeps falling. Unfortunately, our local rag, the Lakeland Ledger, has picked up many columnists columns from the TB Times. If it weren’t for the local section of the Ledger, I’d cancel in a heartbeat. (They, the Ledger, charge to read on-line if you’re not a subscriber)

I’m hoping their first cost cutting measure will be to dump their entire editorial page staff. Then we can stop reading about how George Bush, Rick Scott and David Jolly- bad and Barack Obama and Alex Sink- good.

By many measures, the economy is improving steadily even if growth remains painfully slow. There have been 31 straight months of job growth, and more than 5 million private sector jobs have been created. The unemployment rate is down to 7.8 percent  not great, but the same as when Obama took office. The stock market has come back, new housing starts are the highest in four years and housing prices in Tampa Bay and other areas are rising. The financial industry is stable, interest rates remain low and corporate profits are healthy. There is still too much economic pain, but America is better off than most of the rest of the industrialized world.

Da! Is good!

10
posted on 03/06/2014 6:26:57 AM PST
by Texas Eagle
(If it wasn't for double-standards, Liberals would have no standards at all -- Texas Eagle)

"Their circulation should be going through the sky. They should be hiring. Again, why?"

Why? Maybe when your editorial policy pi$$es off half of your potential client base, you stand to lose a lot of potential customers. I live in Pinellas County but I subscribe to the Tampa Tribune. Not an overly conservative paper but definitely middle of the road. I start my day in a much better mood after quitting the Times.

Most of the columnists/contributors appear liberal....even if they claim to be Republican. This is a poor excuse for a newspaper. imho, the majority of the stories they write are either blatantly biased or written in a way to imply any Republican is ‘bad’.

Few “news reports” are truly factual.Almost all are “opinion” or otherwise slanted.They seem to be incapable of straight news.

If you want to learn about local events, look to foreign news sources, or monitor police/emergency frequencies.

The print press companies backed the wrong technology for the last few decades. Instead of becoming more ethical, trustworthy and less political, they went full on full BS for marketing purposes. Have you noticed that newspaper stands now mostly direct potential buyers inside?

I'm shocked that anyone still subscribes to them at all!

26
posted on 03/06/2014 8:25:07 PM PST
by sarasmom
(Extortion 17. A large number of Navy SEALs died on that mission. Ask why.)

The Tampa Bay Times (formerly St Petersberg Times) is rabidly lib. If the main news story of the day is complimentary to conservatives, they totally abandon the idea of running any news headline at all and use an op-ed or poll as the headline.

Their most loved agenda item is how nobody in FL pays enough taxes.

I won’t even buy them for the coupons, so I am proud to say I am part of their problem.

28
posted on 03/07/2014 1:42:55 PM PST
by I still care
(I miss my friends, bagels, and the NYC skyline - but not the taxes. I love the South.)

My “favorite” endorsement was a judgeship. It ran something like this. “This person is reasonable, has wonderful experience, blah, blah, blah. The other person is also qualified, but not quite as much, but is black. We feel diversity is most important, so we recommend the black candidate over the other one.”

I kid you not. It was staggering.

29
posted on 03/07/2014 1:48:26 PM PST
by I still care
(I miss my friends, bagels, and the NYC skyline - but not the taxes. I love the South.)

Wow. I quit my subscription. The Tampa Tribune started a St. Petersburg Tribune that’s a lot more economical. Tampa Bay Times has so many different price ranges - that makes no sense whatsoever. What’s the price for everybody? Anyway, gonna try the St. Pete Tribune instead.

Their renewal dept isn’t very good either. I was certain that my renewal was in the fall but when I called, they said, it was this February. So, I got months and months of newspapers for free cuz their billing was messed up even after I tried to correct them. Switching to St. Petersburg Tribune instead.

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